XF 1.1 Drop import data and re-do, keeping add-ons?

[Mouth]

Hi,

I am converting over a large'ish vB 3.8 site, and have installed xenForo into a test/beta site and done a few runs of the import process. I have also installed a few add-ons, and set some configurations settings for these.

Following the Import Guidelines, I assume that if I drop all tables and re-install a backup DB from immediately after a fresh xF install, then I will also lose/affect the add-ons? Is there a method to just drop all imported vB 3.8 data and do a new import whilst keeping the rest of the xF (add-ons) in-tact?

Or should my process be the reverse (and more timely) process of installing a fresh xF install, then installing all my add-ons, and then taking a DB backup ready for last import test and final import? Any 'gotchas' following this method?

I assume it's probably the latter, but don't want to go down that road and later slap my forehead when I find-out there was an easier/quicker method to drop all import data only

Thanks.

 

[Paul B]

Or should my process be the reverse (and more timely) process of installing a fresh xF install, then installing all my add-ons, and then taking a DB backup ready for last import test and final import? Any 'gotchas' following this method?

Yes, that is the recommended method as per the guidelines: http://xenforo.com/community/threads/importing-guidelines.25325/

There is no easy way to selectively drop data; although some have done it, I wouldn't recommend it.
With add-ons included, it becomes even more problematic.

 

[SchmitzIT]

I'm one of the ones who was a naugvhty boy and went ahead by manually removing all imported content.

The script I used back then can be found here, though that was only for the content that existed at that particular point in time after my import. I cannot guarantee that it will still work, that it will still be removing all content, or that it will not mess something up if you're not 100% sure of what you are doing.

With that said, I did manage to get my own site working with help from that script, and if you are a bit into SQL, the script would be easy to expand on (perhaps using a trial and error process with a new test import process).

 

[high1976]

we tried to go the same way (see other thread) but even if it seemed to work fine at first, we saw some serious issues with (plugins-)permissions. It worked fine for frontend but some apc-edits took ages. Moving a user to another usergroup for example took >2min (instead of a second, even needed to modify the xf-timeout so it went through). Somehow XF was looping through permissions and even cleaning them doesn't help. No idea what went wrong but we saw that on several 3.8 imports with different bases and plugins.
After that experience I suggest to start clean to avoid possible issues on the long run.

 

[SchmitzIT]

Hmm. I do not share that same experience. With that said, we do see some funky behaviour with thread/forum permissions every now and then for very specific users. Perhaps that is caused by the old import?

 

[high1976]

define 'funky' but imho yes, that sound familiar. I guess it depends on the amount of users/usergroups aso, maybe on a small userbase you won't see any difference. But with 100k this looping took a serious amount of time to complete. There was nothing unusual in db/size or anything as well as logs (even mysql-slowlogs) where clean. Just by using strace we found the same permission-sql looping over and over. I can just guess it has to do with xf's permission combination but we never really found the issue. Starting from scratch was much faster and we never saw those issues on a clean start again.

 

[Mouth]

Thanks, will definantly take the 2nd option of fresh install, add-ons, and then import. With 1.4mill posts and 22k users, I don't want 'funky' stuff